


Quantities of Light

by lilith_morgana



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Lucifer (TV) Season/Series 05, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:41:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26087350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_morgana/pseuds/lilith_morgana
Summary: They owe each other laughter.Chloe reflects on her relationship during season 5A.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 38
Kudos: 323





	Quantities of Light

**Author's Note:**

> So, I come bearing Deckerstar fluff as my first S5 fic.

His home bleeds into her when he no longer inhabits it.  
  
It’s like the absence of him - the mind-breaking _reasons_ for it - wrecks her borders and renders her body open to all sorts of notions, impulses, _compulsions_. To the shadows he’s left behind.  
  
Occasionally she stops by on her way home from work, pretending to herself that she needs to check something in the penthouse and then she stands there, the palms of her hands pressed against the elevator wall, her eyes closed. Lucifer’s at the piano, then, or behind the bar, looking up as she enters. Smiling easily, the way he hasn’t done in so long because the last year has brutalized everyone but him in particular and she never got the chance to make him laugh again. They owe each other laughter.  
  
They owe each other _laughter_ but his home greets her with silence, a composed sort of grief that doesn’t fit him or fits him so well it breaks her heart.  
  
The nights at Lux are better; the nights at Lux are still alive with Lucifer’s energy.  
  
There are times when she swears she can feel the joyous desire he creates, the vibe she’d found in him long before she knew - a frantic sort of longing, a pulse through the air, a question for an unspecified _more_ . That, most of all, makes up the outlines of her feelings for him. He’s so many things to her by now and she can barely stand some of them but, regardless, she wants more.  
  
And Lux keeps them, holds them in its tiresome lights and roaring crowds. She’s felt safe here, walled up and protected. From the world, from herself. Perhaps that’s why he loves the place, too.  
  
In her memory she saves his home from destruction - _I’ve always been on your side_ \- and he grabs hold of her with such glittering, shining delight that her knees give in as her arms encircle his neck and they dance, dance, dance. He smells of tobacco and alcohol and she feels it tickle at the back of her throat; he searches for her gaze and holds it, as gently as he holds her.

In her memory they have danced here, almost died here, been torn apart here.  
  
It’s different now but she can still sense them, all the fragments of the past. 

“Yeah, he’s still gone,” Maze says and pours them drinks from his top shelf, the one Chloe hasn’t seen him touch during any of her visits to the penthouse. Not that she’s typically visited him for celebratory reasons, not that they’ve typically been triumphant together. _Then why does it feel that way?_ _  
__  
_“Sure,” Chloe agrees. There’s a beat to the music, a slant to the lights down here that dulls everything else in her, hushes up the doubts. “For now.”  
  
Maze raises an eyebrow but says nothing else and then the night claims them, again.  
  
  
  
*  
  
  
Even when he’s back - the _real_ him, not the broken mirror wearing his face - and in her arms, within her reach, the reality of him is fickle and flimsy, the promises unspoken. She clings to the physical reality of his home then, too, grounds herself in the polished surfaces and neon lights.   
  
_Thousands of years_ he says and Chloe can’t breathe. It’s the fear again, the one Michael planted beneath her breastbone, the one clawing its way into her lungs. Is this how Lucifer feels to others? Is this the unfathomable creature he actually is?  
  
 _A gift from God_ , he says or implies and she isn’t certain which is worse - that it’s _true_ , that he knew about it or that he willingly accepted it. _Did he?_ _  
__  
_And despite all this she loves him with a faith that surprises her.  
  
And it’s not _enough_ , because love alone never is. _  
__  
  
_

*  
  
  


The night outside carries a promise of cooler weather when she returns, once more, walking the familiar path between the matters that keep them separated. He sits there like he’s waiting for her, like he’s always been, but it’s Chloe who closes the last bit of distance between them.   
  
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Lucifer says and she wants to touch his lips with the tip of her tongue. “I think he might be right.”  
  
And he might be, or he’s entirely wrong and it doesn’t _matter_. 

  
  
  
*  
  
  
His home bleeds into her even with him back, the hordes of darkness and the forces of light in him storming her remaining borders.  
  
The wood of his piano cools her warm hands as her breath catches in her throat; she wriggles under him, her legs pulling him closer, her fingers under his collar, tearing at buttons. Over the years she’s imagined it differently, imagined it often - then let her own fantasies rest as life has collided with their attempts. She’s nothing if not adaptable, shedding impossible dreams along the way and he’s been one, _oh_ has he ever.  
  
Sometimes she has told herself that’s all he will be, a delightful fantasy, a remote idea never given flesh and blood. His life playing out by her side but separately, scene by scene, lover by lover, the way it’s been for years; stolen moments, feverish thoughts, an undercurrent of longing running through their friendship. It’s nothing new, she sees it all the time - colleagues or childhood friends, calmly co-existing with their unresolved desires threading like ghosts between them. It could have been them. Sometimes, long ago, she has been convinced it would be for the best.  
  
Those doubts are erased now, washed out by the knowledge that there is nothing to be afraid of in the way he undresses her, planting kisses on her collarbones, in the way he encompasses her in all the ways a mortal man would yet nothing like it at the same time because she’s seen his powers, she’s seen him die and live again, she’s seen him rise from the ruins and there is nothing to dread.   
  
It’s real, now. Honest and raw - his teeth graze her lower lip, her nails scrape along the back of his neck and he pushes her up, cradles her against him - and _fluent_ , their bodies well-versed in the language, each kiss a perfect syllable.  
  
It’s freedom, now, to choose him. To not merely be chosen. To not care about anything beyond the gentle curve of his mouth as she silences the phone, tugs at his shirt, fills her palms with the warmth of his skin. He lets his thumb trace the outline of her nipples until she shudders, her body tightening around his motions, she grabs his shoulders, his hips, the back of her head resting against the Sumerian wall of his impossible bedroom.  
  
When he holds out his hand to her everything cracks open and she takes it, takes him, takes every wretched piece of what he is.  
  
They owe each other laughter, not fear.


End file.
